Some days are full of new experiences.
I publicly read the first chapter of Welcome to the Multiverse (Sorry for the Inconvenience) – nothing new, there. I have been doing readings at science fiction conventions for the last three years or so, and, for the last few months, I have read this particular passage. However, this reading was at the Magical Evening of Canadian Authors (MECA), a * SHUDDER * literary event. To give you some idea of how serious the reading was, it was held in a Gastropub. Yeah, I have no idea what they are, either; some place where you can get a more upscale form of indigestion, I gather.
You know how you could tell it was a literary event? Michael Ignatieff was in the audience. I don’t remember ever seeing him at a reading at a science fiction convention! (Although, to be fair, it would have been awesome if he had shown up in a Yoda costume.)
The first half of the evening was made up of readings by three serious novelists. In the second half, Nicole Chardenet (Sumer Lovin’) and I brought the silly. I got a rousing round of applause…for thanking the organizer of the event, Ian Shaw, for organizing the event. People in the audience may have enjoyed my reading, as well.
Earlier that the day, I went to Word on the Street (WotS) to distribute cards promoting the MECA (doesn’t the acronym make it sound like a construction set?). I distributed the cards in a little over an hour; then had a couple of hours to kill before I had to be at the restaurant. If I had been thinking, I would have run to the nearest library and strapped myself in for the duration. Instead, I walked around WotS. Talk about letting a pyromaniac wander around a match factory!
Lock up the children, mother – the literary circus is in town and they’re takin’ over!
To be fair, I was pretty good. I almost made it out of Queen’s Park with my bank balance alive before buying my first book, and I only ended up buying two. The first book was written by a friend of mine – I knew it was out and I had intended to get it the next time I saw her with copies for sale. I just didn’t expect that that would be so soon. As for my excuse buying the other book, umm, well…although Canadian, the author had lived for several years in Australia, and I got a little koala bear when I purchased her book. Yeah, I know, but it was a really CUTE koala…
In other WotS (doesn’t the acronym make it sound like a cheap long distance phone line?) news: I was talking to an author friend when a man in an adjoining booth got my attention and said, “You’re the guy with the hat!”
“The hat?” I asked.
“Yeah, you know, the Mad Hatter’s hat. I was at a table next to you a couple of years ago.”
Aha! I remembered: the last time I had a table at WotS, I did, indeed, wear a Mad Hatter’s hat that I had especially made for me. Aah, memories! We laughed. We cried. We didn’t really have anything more to say to each other, so I moved on.
Everybody knows that it isn’t a proper literary event until at least three people are seen wearing funny and/or funky hats. Unfortunately, I wasn’t wearing my Mad Hatter Special, so I’m not sure if this year’s Word on the Street counted…
Oh, wait – there were clowns. That’s okay, then.
While I was giving away cards for the reading, I came across two young women who were handing out promotional materials for the film Ender’s Game. I told them that I thought what they were doing was pretty gutsy. They shrugged and said it was a job. I asked them how they felt about the boycott of the film. They asked me what I was talking about.
So, I explained that Orson Scott Card, the author of the novel Ender’s Game, had made many homophobic remarks, sparking calls for a boycott of the film. (I had forgotten about his racist remarks about President Obama, but, to be fair, I hadn’t really expected this discussion, so I hadn’t prepared for it.) The young women seemed interested, thanked me for telling them what was happening and went back to distributing their material (far away from me, I couldn’t help but notice).
We all have a job to do, I guess.